Week 28 Tummy (This Week!)



Week 23 Tummy



Week 20 Tummy



Girth Week 20



"Couvade" Terrence



Thank all of you for patiently waiting for this latest installment! Yes, I've been very bad, but looking at the pictures, it's kind of exciting to see the difference a 5 week jump makes -- I'm getting to be huge! And now for some numbers that will really shock you: most of you probably at least met me at 110 lbs (basically this is what I weighed from about 10 to 32). Some of you have seen me since I quit smoking (at 32) when my weight jumped up to 130 lbs. So, what's the number now, after 6 months of pregnancy? A whopping 170, and I'm still looking at gaining another 10 to 15 lbs before this craziness is at an end. To assuage any fears or concerns out there: I'm perfectly healthy even though I've gained more than the "average;" and one of the joys of breastfeeding is that it takes about 500 calories a day, so the theory is that all this extra fat is going to go towards milk production (ah! the joys of feeling like a cow in more ways than one!). I also thought that many of you would simply get some shocked amusement re: the weight gain.

So, let's see what else is going on . . . Today is the first official day of the 3rd trimester, so the big day is looming closer and closer! [I had this great dream the other night where I went into labor, it lasted about ten minutes, and then Terrence and I wrapped up the baby, left it on the floor (!!!), and went out to buy bagels.] Our last visit with the midwife went just fine -- as near as she could tell the little squirmer was lying with its head on my left side, its feet on my right, and its butt down towards my pelvis. The midwife also thought it was pretty amusing that little Kicky McKickerson is so active -- it's really out of control -- all of the books say that your baby will feel gently rocked to sleep when you're moving and then become active when you sit or lay down. Well, as near as I can tell, this little one sleeps from about 8 am until noon and then spends the other 20 hours practicing dance numbers from Footloose.

I also seem to have passed my glucose tolerance test, so no gestational diabetes! Hooray! 'Cause giving up chocolate after giving up cigarettes, beer, whiskey & sodas, and all but the barest amounts of caffeine would be intolerable.

Terrence is doing well but seems to have picked up a serious case of "couvade" (it's French for "to hatch"! Voila!), which basically means that he's having bad sympathy symptoms, e.g. neither one of us has ever suffered from heartburn -- now we've each got a stash of Tums next to the bed (see also picture with pickles). I think it's really sweet, even if it is making him uncomfortable. Let's just hope that he doesn't end up with sympathy labor pains -- I think at that point I might get a little bit annoyed.

We've been attending birthing classes for the last several weeks -- we're using the Bradley method, which is great, mostly because it focuses on relaxing and there's none of that ridiculous Lamaze breathing involved. (And, honestly, how could anyone do Lamaze seriously after listing to Bill Cosby? Maybe that's it; maybe you start to do the breathing, think of Bill Cosby, and then laugh your way through labor. Hmmmmm.) We're also whittling down some name lists, finalizing the car seat that we want, and trying to figure out diapering.

Well, I'll leave it at this for the moment & I'll try to get back into the swing of things for the next few weeks.

Okay, I'm totally bad -- and I don't really have the time to write much now, but here are a couple of pictures from Week 18 -- including a really amazingly cool 3-D ultrasound photo!

Hello, everyone! I'm sorry that I missed last week's entry, but (to those of you who are worried) everything is fine; I was just distracted last week with other things.

Welcome to Week 14 and the Second Trimester!!!

Strangely enough my tummy isn't looking any bigger in pictures, but in "life" I'm definitely looking a little bit preggy -- maybe I'm unconsciously holding in my tummy when pictures are being taken. Recently we tried to go shopping for maternity clothes since all of my regular and most of my pre-menstrual bloaty clothes no longer fit. Never have I seen clothes more designed to make you feel frumpy and fat, no matter what everyone keeps telling me about how maternity clothes are practically indistinguishable from regular clothes. So, I'm still trying to wear a couple of regular things along with some loose dresses and skirts; and maybe in a month or two I won't care about how ugly maternity clothes are.

The little alien is getting bigger and bigger -- 3.5 inches or so from head to butt and weighing in at about 1 oz, and s/he has started to hear! Kind of exciting. We have our next appointment on Tuesday, so I'll (hopefully) have a lot more information to pass on after that.

Welcome to Week 12! Not much new to report except that I'm definitely starting to look pregnant. The change in my figure over the past two weeks (compare Week 10 photo to this photo) is pretty alarming, but as one of my books informed me this morning, little Obadiah Juan (Terrence came up with that one -- think about it) has doubled in size over the past three weeks. I'm going to have to find some maternity clothes pretty soon -- even my baggiest of baggy clothes are getting a little uncomfortable by the end of the day. Unfortunately I can't just pillage Terrence's wardrobe 'cause boy pants don't allow any room for my new womanly butt & thighs.

My morning sickness seems to be improving though. In fact, I thought that it had gone away completely, but the past couple of days have been pretty bad, so we're not quite done yet. Well, and really, that's about it for this week. More to come soon!

(Okay, so I started writing this on Wednesday; I just haven't finished it until Saturday. I had yet another almost migraine this week -- the midwife said that I might get more between now and Week 18 -- so, once again, I'm late.)

Well, it's been a pretty exciting week here in Eugene! But first things first: today we have reached 11 weeks, the end of the embryonic stage, the beginning of the fetal stage, little Hortense is about the size of a large lime, and my uterus has started to grow upward towards my belly button. Hooray!

Now onto the exciting stuff. I woke up (last) Saturday morning and noticed a little vaginal bleeding going on -- nothing too much but all of the pregnancy books say to contact a professional if there's any bleeding. So, off we go to the urgent care clinic (like a walk-in clinic). Fortunately, this clinic's only 4 or 5 blocks from our house. Unfortunately, we were deemed pretty low on the emergency scale, so we sat in the waiting room for a good 3 hours before we saw anyone, but it was kinda hard to get upset about this when one of people in front of you is this ancient man whose head is wrapped up like a mummy's, being attended by his daughter who looks old enough to my grandmother and his wife who looks like a weak breeze could knock her over.

Okay, digression over. So, we finally see someone and both the nurses and the doctor start asking me if I'm sure I'm pregnant. I explain that I'm sure about 46 times, but they still tell me to pee in a cup so they can run a pregnancy test. After everybody's convinced that I'm not some crazy lady, the doctor says he's going to try to hear the heartbeat, but assures us that we probably won't hear anything 'cause at 10 weeks (remember this was last week) the little thing's pretty sneaky. But, after much searching, he found the heartbeat, and it was a strong, steady 165 beats per minute (also normal)! Needless to say, that was pretty amazing.

So, now the doctor knows that I'm really pregnant and starts to do a physical exam. He feels the size and shape of my uterus by pushing on my tummy and then does a pelvic exam to see if my cervix is still closed. (Poor Terrence got to see his first pelvic exam, stirrups and all!) The end results (as this doctor sees it) are:

1. I have a small polyp on my cervix -- nothing to worry about -- this is a pretty common cervical reaction to all of the increased estrogen -- and that's what's causing the bleeding
2. I have a vaginal bacteria infection but that can't be treated until the second trimester
and 3. (again, according to this doctor) I have a huge uterus for 10 weeks and I must be wrong about when I had my last period 'cause I'm more like 15 weeks along.

Well, after much rethinking and re-checking of calendars and counting of days, Terrence and I realize that there's no way that I'm 15 weeks pregnant. Then why is my uterus so freakishly large? Well, as we guessed and as our midwife tells us a couple of days later, the obvious answer is that there's twins on the way. So, we're freaking out a little bit but also kind of excited by the idea, but we're trying to remain calm and relaxed because we just don't know, right?

So, fast forward to our first appointment at the birth/midwifery center. The midwife we see is named Michelle -- she's both very personable and very professional -- very reassuring. She and Terrence and I talk a long time about family medical histories and our lifestyle. She decides that she's going to go ahead and order the second trimester blood tests during this trimester because I want to know if I have an immunity to toxoplasmosis and because she wants to know if I have Von Willebrant's (a bleeding disorder that runs in my family), but other than that, she's very pleased and optimistic about my health and both our family histories.

Now, it's time for Terrence to get to see his second pelvic exam in three days! He's okay with all of this, but I'm starting to think that life's pretty unfair -- I mean, it's annoying enough to get these exams once a year, and I'm now up to three of them since Februrary (when I had my annual physical). Then again I'm going to have to get used to people looking at my cervix over the next few months, right?

So, first things first, we get to hear the heart beat again. (Actually the first thing was Michelle telling me that I have great nipples for breastfeeding -- the kind of complement every girl wants!) It's a bit slower this time, about 135 beats per minute (again, completely within the range of normal), and Michelle thinks that she was only hearing one heartbeat. She also says that my uterus is not freakishly large, so, though she says not to totally discount the possibility of twins, that possibility is considerably lower that it had been for a few days.

So, one thing wrong for the very nice doctor in the urgent care clinic. What about the polyp? Well, Michelle can't find that either. But she thinks that I might have a bit of a yeast infection which could have irritated my cervix and caused a bit of the bleeding. Strike two for the nice doctor.

Michelle then looks under the microscope at something she swabbed from the inside of my vagina (pleasant to read about, isn't it? you should be so lucky as to experience it) to see if I have both the bacterial infection that the nice doctor said I did and the yeast infection that she thinks I have. Guess what? No bacterial infection! (Poor nice doctor from urgent care! But I don't want to insult him that much -- he did find the heartbeat for us when we were pretty worried.) And, yes, I do have a yeast infection! Fortunately, the yeast infection can be treated. Unfortunately, I have been having to use the 7 day Monistat instead of the nice and powerful 1 or 3 day Monistat. Ah well!

Here you have this week's saga -- more to come in a few days!

I can't believe that I'm actually posting on the proper day this week! Amazing! So, yes, welcome to week 10 -- the last week of the embryonic period (next Wednesday we'll have an official fetus -- through embryo is a much more pleasant word than fetus).

Mr. or Ms. Peanut has now turned into Mr. or Ms. Plum. If you touch the tip of your thumb with the tip of the index finger on the same hand (make the OK! gesture), you'll get a circle in which the little thing would fit.

Not much has happened since I last wrote, though we have been busy doing some diapering research. I know it sounds a bit early for this sort of thing, but I'm glad that I've started to look because cloth diapering is this huge area that's totally confusing. Cotton, hemp, polyester, microfiber, fitted, flat, prefolded, all-in-one, one size fits all, pinned, velcro, snaps, buy, make, borrow, blah, blah, blah. Who knew that there were this many options? Though we have decided that Plum will not get anything other than breast milk until it's potty trained! Why, you ask? Because I had to change this diaper last week, and, well, it was awful. Imagine the following combination: morning sickness, baby's first few days eating sweet potatoes, lots of poop the consistency of greased peanut butter, said poop running from the baby's neck to the baby's feet, and you start to get the picture. I was hoping that maybe it smelled so bad because it wasn't my baby's poop, but I've been assured by this baby's parents that it's just as bad for them.

You might have noticed that we moved the yard stick down for the picture this week, so hopefully we'll start to see some movement along the way 'cause I'm definitely not losing weight!

And, finally, one of our other babies has also made it into this week's post: our cat Paden who is not going to be amused when my tummy is no longer available for sleeping. Perhaps, as the weeks go along, you'll get to meet the others: Potatoe, Sasha, and Bobo.

Goodness! I'm even later this week! But I've got a good excuse -- actually, it's a bad excuse in that my excuse caused me lots of pain, but a good excuse in that I was in a lot of pain. At any rate, on Wednesday of this past week (week 9 for those of you keeping track) I had, like, half a migraine. On Thursday, I had, say, a 20% migraine. Y'know, more than a headache or at least different than a headache but not quite screaming agony. And then on Friday, a -- I want to take a set of pliers to my molars to relieve some of the pressure on the right side of my head, my eye is going to explode, why can't I see properly -- migraine set in. All of the baby books, medical literature, and doctor's orders stress not taking any unnecessary medications, especially during the first trimester, but if, they say, you have to take pain mediation, you can't take anything other than tylenol, which, in this situation, did absolutely nothing. So, yeah, I had a pretty shitty day yesterday, but I'm back to 20% today, so (hopefully) tomorrow I'll feel back to normal.

On to some good news! I don't seem to be moving along the yard stick at all, but I look more bulgy in places and the little tadpole has grown to the size of a grape or olive, which just seems like an incredible amount of growth from last week's pinto bean, but I guess it has to grow sometime.

My morning sickness seems to be changing a bit -- I vomited for the first time yesterday, but I think that was caused by the migraine -- I don't feel constantly nauseous anymore, but I do often feel like I'm on a boat -- especially when I'm lying down. Just a very strange sensation. So, Terrence and I went out tonight to buy some of those motion sickness wrist bands. They seems to be doing something -- I feel different, but I'm just not quite sure if I feel better.

Terrence started talking to Mr. or Ms. Olive this past week. He informed the child that it was going to appreciate good beer when it got old enough (we do live in the pacific northwest after all!). It was pretty funny, though, 'cause he looked at my tummy, started talking about beer, and then, in a very meta-situational way, started talking about wondering when he was going to start talking to my tummy.

No other news to report so far. We're still about 10 days out from our first appointment with the midwife, but when that happens we should be able to hear a heartbeat (and I'll probably get to hear that I'm gaining too much weight already, but I'm oh-so-thankful that I'm not throwing up constantly -- my mom lost 10 lbs in the first trimester from vomiting and that sort of thing is supposed to be genetic, so I'm very lucky and very happy about it).